High-school seniors and their parents often carefully weigh financial-aid offers in selecting a college to attend. But what comes as an inconvenient surprise to many families is that student financial aid can change—sometimes quite significantly—from year to year.

Does your family include a student who is heading into his or her sophomore or later year?
As the fall semester nears, we’d like to know about your experiences with financial aid, and how you’re feeling about your aid this year compared to last. Let us know in the form below. (If you are on a mobile device and can’t see the form, please tell us in the comments.) We may use your responses in print in a coming special report. Read More »

A new study finds more American families selecting two-year public colleges as a way to control education costs, while other students benefit from in-state tuition rates at their states’ four-year schools.

But some of the most intriguing data in the annual college-costs study released early Thursday by Sallie Mae, the education lender formally known as SLM Corp., concerns what families pay for children attending private four-year colleges. In the recently ended 2013-14 academic year, the average total costs for families with students at those schools fell 11.6% to $34,855 from $39, 434.

“I think most likely they are picking cheaper schools,” said Sarah Ducich, a co-author of the study. In other case, she said, private-college students may be reducing their total costs by living at home or going to a school that isn’t far away, thereby reducing travel costs. (The study was based on a telephone survey of 800 undergraduates and a similar number of parents of undergrads by market-research company Ipsos Public Affairs.)

One challenge for cost-conscious families, though, is that identifying cheaper colleges isn’t so easy. And the way the Sallie Mae study defines college costs doesn’t get at one key aspect of schools’ charges. Read More »

Much has been made of new college graduates’ struggles to find gainful employment, let alone employment related to their majors. But new Federal Reserve research suggests one tactic that could give them a leg up: Looking for work in big cities.

Fed researchers came up with a measure called “college degree match” to measure whether or not graduates were getting jobs that required a college degree. They came up with a separate measure called “college major match” to see if their chosen jobs were directly related to what they majored in.

Depending on your perspective, it’s either heartening or disappointing that about 62% of college grads get a job that requires at least a B.A. But more shocking, only 27% get a job that’s related to their major. Read More »